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Business leaders backing the fight against dementia

Genworth Mortgage Insurance chairman Mr Richard Grellman has joined business leaders backing University of NSW research aimed at harnessing "big data" to help prevent dementia, which is expected to affect almost one million Australians by 2050 at an economic cost of almost three per cent of gross domestic product.

The Dementia Momentum program hopes to lead an international consortium of studies by pooling research into "big data sets" that the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing co-director Perminder Sachdev said would produce "more robust statistical models".

"The future of dementia research is in being able to bring the scores of international studies together for a common purpose," Professor Sachdev said.

The Dementia Momentum program will be launched at KPMG's Sydney offices with the aim of raising funds and increasing awareness about the disease. Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing co-director Professor Henry Brodaty said tackling known risk factors for dementia could prevent up to 20 per cent of new cases by 2025.